Coldplay dazzles, and keeps the rain away

''IT'S gonna be a good one, boys!'' cried Coldplay singer/guitarist/piano guy Chris Martin, accurately, to his cohorts during opener Hurts Like Heaven.

What do you want from a stadium rock show? Erupting fireworks, dazzling lasers and confetti cannons in overdrive? Spectacular sights such as 50,000 raised fists illuminated by flashing multicoloured wristbands (supplied on entry and triggered by the band)? Anthems that can fill such an expansive venue and a frontman who can seemingly connect with everyone in it?

These Brit rock world-beaters not only provided all this before the end of this evening's second song (the lush ballad In My Place), they somehow seemed able to keep the rain away, too.

Having instantly put a smile upon most faces by arriving to the stirring orchestral theme from the Back to the Future movies, the band spent the rest of the evening giving everyone, from first-time gig-goers to those who think they've seen it all, a large-scale concert experience as impressive as few others.

If it sounds like they might as well have been playing any old nonsense and no one would have cared, such was the enormity of the spectacle, that wasn't the case, either. Even with a set skewed heavily towards the good-not-great latest album Mylo Xyloto, Coldplay had plenty of their biggest (in every sense) tunes ready to drop at regular intervals: the achingly pretty The Scientist; after a sweetly muted piano-and-vocals-led intro, a vigorous Yellow; the pounding march of Violet Hill.

Most of the show was bombastically performed on the main stage in front of an elaborate graffiti backdrop and five huge circular screens. Some came more intimately presented at the end of a runway stretching into the crowd. Pretty much all of it was unforgettable.